During his 12-year
NBA career, first
with the Cleveland
Cavaliers and later
with the Phoenix
Suns, Kevin Johnson
was one of basketball’s leading playmakers.
The three-time NBA All-Star is one of
only four players to average at least 20
points and 10 assists per game in three different
seasons. In July 1989, shortly after
the close of his second season, Johnson
returned to the inner-city Sacramento
neighborhood where he grew up. He
launched a nonprofit afterschool program
housed in a portable classroom on the
grounds of Sacramento High School.
Today, Johnson’s nonprofit has taken over
the entire high school, and then some.
Johnson retired from basketball in
2000 and began focusing all of his discipline,
energy, and intelligence on his 11-
year-old nonprofit. Under his leadership,
St. Hope has blossomed into a full-fledged
community revitalization project: St.
Hope Public Schools, a pre-K to 12 charter
school district serving 2,000 students; St.
Hope Neighborhood Corps, which trains
young people to be community leaders;
40 Acres Art Gallery, which sponsors
exhibitions, films, lectures, performances,
and classes; and St. Hope Development
Company, which has generated more
than $11 million in development projects,
creating 14 businesses and 282 jobs.

JAMES A. PHILLS JR.: Was there a
seminal moment in your life when
the passion for the work that you’re
doing was ignited?

KEVIN JOHNSON: I remember sitting
in an English class in college at UC
Berkeley. I was a freshman – it was the
first day of class and the teacher asked
all the students if they knew what the
word “euphemism” meant. There
were 32 kids in the class and 31 raised
their hands. I was the only one who
didn’t, and I was just baffled: “How
could all these kids know what the
word ‘euphemism’ meant?” Then one
kid asked the teacher a question and I
couldn’t even understand the question.
I just didn’t think it was fair that
31 other people from all over the state
– who went to different high schools –
were exposed to that learning and
I wasn’t. It wasn’t a cool feeling. So I
said to myself that if I ever made it,
I was going to go back to my community because I didn’t want other kids
to have to feel that feeling.

How do you think about what’s necessary
to achieve educational reform
in underresourced communities?

First, in order to really improve
inner-city public education, economic
development and community
revitalization have to be a part of the
equation. We have to make sure that
businesses and services and private
investment are all directed toward
building inner-city communities. It
has to be a holistic approach.

Second, every community, every
child, and every family has to have
access to a high-quality education.
Public schools are not providing that
across the board, while charter
schools and others are providing families
with a choice, and via that
choice, competition. Competition is
not a bad thing.

Third, I think a voice is missing
from this fight – this movement that
we’re all participating in – and it’s the
grassroots voice of the students and
families that are most disenfranchised.
Until we get them to the table
there are going to be inequalities, no
matter how hard we try. But when
their voice is loud and consistent,
then real pressure will be put on the
schools and the system that unfortunately
strangles the opportunities
that we so desperately want to have.

How do you affect the ability of
those voices to be heard?

The impetus for our efforts [in the
Oak Park area of Sacramento] was
driven by the community. We were
representing 28,000 people in the
community who wanted change. We
were out there fighting for their
cause. Typically, you have 30 or 40
people show up at a local school
board meeting. When we took over
Sacramento High School at our first
school board meeting we had 250
people. That spoke volumes to the
local school board, which was going
back and forth on whether or not it
was in favor of what we were doing.
At our second board meeting, about
500 people showed up. That’s what’s
missing in this battle: We need to
really get our community and our
grassroots folks at the table.

How do you get young people to
become leaders?

We believe leadership is really about
service. We want our young people
to go to college and to give one year
of their life afterward by coming
back to their community or a community
similar to theirs. It’s people
from those communities who are
going to have the most lasting and
sustaining impact. That’s really our
mission – getting our kids to understand
that no matter how successful
you are, you have to come back,
because people in these communities
need to see somebody who looks like
them. They need to see somebody
who walked the same streets that
they walk, and they need somebody
who can share those same stories.

Can you say more about the importance
of economic development?

Our model is to focus on one geographic
area in a particular community
and get all the forces pointed in
the right direction. We started a real
estate development company, St.
Hope Development Company, and
we now have a couple of mixed-use
commercial real estate projects in the
Oak Park community. Our real estate
development company has been very
successful. I think we’ve developed
nearly $15 million worth of projects
in our community. Government dollars
from local redevelopment agencies
certainly played a role to help
subsidize a project, but private investment
has been a key as well. Our real
estate development company has a
business mentality. Its goal is to produce
a profit, but it is a nonprofit, so
all the revenue goes back into the
company and the community. Fifty
percent of the profit goes back into
the real estate development company
and the other 50 percent goes into
the other work we’re doing, whether
it’s public education or some of our
art projects.

Why did you choose real estate as
the engine of economic activity, as
opposed to other types of ventures?

We felt that there needed to be
something tangible that people could
see. If you renovate a dilapidated
building it symbolizes hope. The
community knows that change is
happening. Often in our community
change is not visible. We felt that
young people and families on the
edge of hopelessness needed to see
something real. Real estate was our
way of doing projects that were very
visible, high impact, that produced
revenue and a bottom line, and that
would allow us to do more work.
When people walked by buildings
that were once havens for drug lords,
transients, or whatever else was
going on in there that was undesirable,
when they saw change taking
place, they began to walk a little bit
differently. Now these are places
where people from our community
have jobs. They can go to the local
Starbucks now and have coffee in
their community. There’s an art
gallery and a barbershop – again,
industries that are often, unfortunately,
absent in our communities.

Where did your views about the
importance of integrating community
economic development with
education reform come from? What
led you to see this challenge in that
broad way?

I came from that community and
that’s what makes my lens a lot different
from everyone else’s. I didn’t
have a great public school education.
If it weren’t for sports I wouldn’t
have gone to college – especially a
four-year college. And when I came
back after being in the NBA, one of
the first things I wanted to do was
create an equal playing field. That
meant that every kid in that community
had to have access to a quality
education.

But after not too long I realized
that we’re dependent on the government
in many areas, and we don’t
think in terms of business and economic
development, or really controlling
our own fate. So rather than
becoming overinvolved in community
development and social service,
we started a real estate development
company so that our community
could get a little bit more sophisticated
when it came to pulling itself
up by its bootstraps and really having
a seat at the table. That has been very
catalytic in our community, but it
was a paradigm shift that had to take
place in our community.
The way you talk about this evokes
the notion of “social entrepreneurship.”

Is that label part of your identity?
Has it influenced or been helpful
in the work that you are doing?

It depends on what circle I’m in. Certainly,
what we’re doing is social
entrepreneurship, and in some circles
that’s relevant. If I’m in another circle,
then we’re often seen as a charter
management organization. If I’m in
Sacramento, which unfortunately is
not quite as sophisticated along these
lines, I am just a businessman who’s
invested in his urban community. So
the relevance of the label depends on
the context.

What do you see as the role of
celebrity in philanthropy and
activism? Could you be doing what
you’re doing if you weren’t a
famous athlete?

In my case it definitely helps. However,
I would challenge the notion
that I couldn’t do it if I were not an
athlete. The doors wouldn’t, perhaps,
be as readily opened, but in our
country we respect and admire
results – people who are getting it
done. Around the country the athlete
thing often gets in the way, unfortunately.
A lot of communities and
people who want to see change think
that we as athletes are the saviors of
inner-city communities, and I don’t
think that’s the case. There are only
435 professional basketball players
and none of them are the richest
people in this country. There are
many more people in different cities
and communities that can have a
much larger impact if they want to
be engaged. The athlete thing or the
celebrity status is great if you can use
it, but that’s not where I recommend
putting all our eggs.

You have talked about the importance
of accountability, measuring
performance, and commitment –
these sound a lot like the principles
of competitive athletics. Do you
see a connection between how you
think as a businessperson, an educator,
and a nonprofit executive
and the lessons that you’ve
learned as a college and professional
athlete?

Sports and business have a very
strong relationship. In the world of
athletics there’s a burden of accountability.
Every day you’re written
about, so you either succeed or you
don’t on a daily basis. It doesn’t matter
what you did two or three days
before. That kind of accountability is
just par for the course when you play
sports.

But in the educational arena, test
scores come about twice a year, then
you implement something, and
that’s another year. You don’t have
the kind of constant assessment of
real performance that you have in
the world of athletics. Bringing that
accountability into the arena of education
has been really helpful.